Fear

I was scared of a lot as a kid. North Alabama, where I grew up, is beautiful, but it can be a frightening place.

When we were in elementary school, my best friend Casey and I used to talk almost daily about things that scared us. Between the two of us, we were basically nervous wrecks. 

It started with killer bees, which we probably read about in a story at school. We worried that killer bees were going to kill us all. We spent one whole summer working on a plan to eradicate them, starting in Brazil. If we ever let them get to Mexico, it was too late. This was all on our shoulders to solve, of course.

We also watched a lot of tv we probably shouldn’t have - 80s era crime shows, talk shows, and The Young and The Restless. Adulthood seemed terrifying, when your perception of what it’s like to be a grownup comes from watching those genres basically nonstop.

Athens, Alabama, my hometown, is home to TVA’s Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant, which has always fascinated me. Around town, there are all these outdated 1960s-era evacuation route signs. I was as curious as I was scared, so I did whatever research I could, mostly through the outdated set of encyclopedias my grandparents had, about what nuclear energy was and what “fallout” meant. What I read both intrigued and terrified me. I was convinced that it was just a matter of time before there was a nuclear disaster at Browns Ferry and I’d be the only person alive who actually knew what to do in case of a mandatory evacuation, which would be to listen for the special siren (different than the steady blare you hear for a tornado warning), tie a white towel on your door to alert authorities you’ve escaped, get in your car, and drive away from the nuclear plant. I kept a tin of rock candy under my bed, near my suitcase, that I could pull out in the emergency situation and use as food. Just in case. I also walked through this scenario many times in my head, visualizing how I’d get my family out the door safely if the worst happened.

As if we would have time to evacuate in the event of an actual nuclear emergency. 

I saw something on tv about aliens one time, and as a result, more nights than I want to admit, I struggled to convince my brain that there would not be an alien invasion and I would probably wake up on earth the next day. 

As an adult who’s been through years of therapy and self-reflection, I now understand that I was a child who was experiencing extreme anxiety, living in survival mode, with no resources to cope with the feelings all of these big, scary things were bringing up for me. It’s not my parents’ or really anyone else’s fault: no one in 1980s Alabama knew about things like therapy, feelings, or mental health. If you had a problem, you weren’t to talk about it. You were to pray about it.

This brings me to my biggest, most anxiety-inducing fear, growing up in an Evangelical Pentecostal church as I did: fear of the prophecies of the book of Revelations coming true. If you don’t know what I’m talking about: the Pentecostals believe that the Lord is coming back from Heaven to Earth for His chosen people - when, we don’t know! Man knoweth not the hour or the day; stay tuned! His “chosen ones” include the dead people who believed and were loyal, but happened to have died before the rapture. They will rise up from their graves first, while we on earth watch all this play out live in person, although it wasn’t really clear if they’d be in their earthly bodies or skeletons or half and half or something else, and then after the dead float up to Heaven first, the rest of us will ascend to Heaven, too.

Well, all of us except for the liars, cheaters, fornicators, abominations of God, sinners, witches, gays, nonbelievers, feminists, and pagans: they will be left behind to suffer the mark of the beast and burn in a devil’s hell for all eternity. 

I had so many questions. About all of this. I worried about being left behind, but was scared to even ask questions about all this. Questions bordered on blaspheming. I was instructed to just believe what I was told, so I tried really hard to do that, hoping to be a good girl and not cause too much trouble (see above: the subtext with all this was that the feminists and witches are the ones who ask questions, and that’ll get you left behind and is that how you want to spend your eternity?). I was left to my own devices, to make up stories that filled in the many, many gaps that appear when you try to actually imagine the rapture happening, because it makes no sense.

This resulted in a considerable amount of anxiety for me. I didn’t know to call it that. I didn’t even recognize it as anxiety. It just… was. This was life. A life lived in fear.

I pictured this all playing out in the middle of the night, almost every night when I was saying my prayers, terrified that would be the night the Lord decided to come back and I wouldn’t be ready. Was I good enough of a person that day? Had I asked forgiveness for all my transgressions? Did I accidentally blaspheme? Because if I did that I may as well become a feminist pagan fornicator and start having some fun; there was no coming back from blaspheming.

This is what we were taught, weekly, at church, that got reinforced all the time by people around me. It’s not even that people in my life, aside from a small handful, talked about this around us all the time. It just wasn’t ever questioned, deconstructed, or even up for a discussion. It was taken for granted, assumed to be the big-t Truth. I tried so hard to believe it, not wanting to suffer the mark of the beast (probably a microchip) that the gay non-believing witches were doomed to suffer, despite it sounding totally, completely, insane. 

The truth that scared me the most: I didn’t actually believe the rapture was going to happen. Or that hell meant burning in a lake of fire. But since everyone else around me seemed to believe it, I figured I was probably wrong, and the fact that I didn’t fully believe was my problem to solve, presumably before the rapture.

My people really embodied the term “God-fearing” so I did, too. Again, this was me, trying to be good, and just make it to heaven. Nevermind the life you have here on earth. It’s only a means to an end.

Here’s a good example of that: one morning, my great-grandmother who we called Mama Mable fixed breakfast for me and my brother. As we dove into our homemade buttered biscuits, that were so freaking good, Mama Mable glared over at us and asked if we’d prayed over the food first. We, in fact, had not. She said, without a smile or hint of humor, “Y’all better hope the Lord doesn’t kill you with that food, then.” She was not kidding.

Heath and I looked at each other, said a quick, fearful blessing, and tried to enjoy the rest of our breakfast, but the damage had been done. I think about Mama Mable, and this story, almost every time I make biscuits.

I know it’s common for kids to be scared of things. But let me tell you. You don’t really know fear until you’ve been laying in bed as an 8 year old, trembling, because you are just waiting to hear the horn of the angel Gabriel to sound and the clapping of the hooves of the 7 horsemen, meaning it was the time of judgement and good luck to us all, just knowing you were going to be left behind because you had mean thoughts towards your little brother that day and failed to thank the Lord for your biscuits. An alien invasion would probably have been a better fate. They, at least, had spaceships.

No child should ever have to worry that they were such a sinner that they’d be left to burn for all eternity. But, I believed it for a very, very long time, on into adulthood. All other fears and anxiety and self-worth issues stemmed from that one giant fear. I felt, deep down, that I was inherently bad, and should fear Mean God who Would Punish Me for Being A Sinner. And when you think like that, nothing you do on earth really matters anymore. May as well act out your misery in your everyday life, by holding yourself back, since you don’t deserve good or nice things.

Call me a self-centered narcissist, but I didn’t really think whatever sins I committed, especially as a kid, were that bad. Surely I hadn’t done - didn’t really think I was even capable of doing - anything that would warrant a punishment so severe as burning in a lake of fire for all eternity. There’s only so much trouble one can get into when you live in a pasture and your mama won’t let you cross the road. The sinning I did was mostly in my head. I had thoughts that questioned everything I was being told, which only reinforced the lessons I was learning. I felt I was deeply flawed by nature, and there was no hope for me except maybe being spared by God when he came back to raise the dead. I repeatedly repented for thinking, but my thoughts wouldn’t stop coming.

Don’t even get me started on the messages I was getting, and questioning, about religion, race, gender, and sexuality. I felt like I was going to the absolute deepest layer of hell for my thoughts on those issues.

The ironic part about all of this? The church also taught the importance of faith. I was told to believe that things will work out. And believe that God will provide, and take care of you. Out of all the contradictory messages I got in the church, this was probably the most confusing one. How can you practice faith if you never fully come to terms with your fears? It would stand to reason that if I had faith, I could ask all the questions my curious little heart wanted and still not burn in hell. Why were questions scary? Why were questions wrong? Am I just supposed to ignore the fear you’re instilling in me? If God was as good as everyone said, then why would he condemn anyone to burn in a lake of fire, with no possible redemption chances?

So much of my life made zero sense. My head would hurt trying to wrap my brain around these ideas.

When you grow up with so many fears, and try to believe something that just doesn’t make any sense to you, some of your fears and an ability to believe in things that aren’t real inevitably spill over into adulthood, and non-religious things in your everyday life.

I fully recognize that my experiences are on the extreme end of one tiny sect of Christianity, and not all churches instill the same level of fear in their members. Many churches do a ton of good for their members and communities. My friends who are religious and spiritual leaders have been agents of positive change - especially in race, gender, and sexuality - in the organizations where they work. I’m not anti-Christian or anti-religion. For every church-induced trauma story I have, I can tell you another one about a friend or relative whose religious experiences were overwhelmingly positive. I love that for them.

But, I realized later in life that I had serious work to do in order to reconcile what I’d been taught to believe with how I, as an adult, wanted to show up in the world. The process of unlearning these fears and harmful beliefs has been an interesting journey for me, and I’m so thankful for the therapists I’ve had who’ve helped me with that. But that’s not really my point of the post today.

My point is: fear can truly hold you back.

Fear prevents you from asking questions. Questions that, when answered, lead to changes.

But faith can give you the strength to listen to, and act on, the answers.

I remember the day I finally decided that I had to quit my job and leave an entire profession. It was a terrifying thought, and scarier question. Who was I if I wasn’t a “professor?” I didn’t even know anymore.

Just a couple of days later, I realized the only thing keeping me at my job, and the only thing holding me back from quitting, was fear. 

Fear that I would regret leaving the security of tenure. Fear I wouldn’t ever make any money or find clients. Fear that I would disappoint my mentors, who worked really hard to help me get to where I was. Fear that I would want my office/job/situation back. 

On the other side of this fear, one year later, I can tell you: literally every one of those is unfounded. I found clients, made money, and felt just as supported by my mentors as I had been when I was in academia.

It eventually occurred to me that I’d conquered fears before. As an adult, I started tip-toeing into things that scared me. It’s been worth it every time. Things I once feared weren’t so scary once I jumped in and tried them. (A short list of examples: triathlons, open water swimming, getting married, having a kid, writing a dissertation, learning how to make yeast breads, questioning the Pentecostals.) The way I conquered them was faith in myself. I just knew that things would work out, even if I didn’t quite know how they would work out.

I love a redemption story, so if anything redeeming happened from my years in church: it provided some really fascinating context for my life as an adult, an ability to have compassion and understanding for the fearful among us, and, despite trying to scare it out of me, ultimate faith in myself.

I probably don’t have to tell you that I no longer go to a Pentecostal church.

In the middle of a super bad depressive episode a few years ago, I started meditating in an effort to help me get better. For those of you unfamiliar with or scared of this concept, here’s how it goes: Sit quietly somewhere, close your eyes or stare at a point in space, and breathe. Every time you think of something, which happens no matter how zen you are, you kindly point out to yourself that you are thinking instead of just breathing, and go back to just breathing. Repeat until a timer goes off.

In other words, sit quietly and breathe for 10 minutes. Meditation is a silent prayer session, where you just listen for whatever truth comes up for you.

Coincidentally, meditation is banned in Alabama schools, as yoga was until recently.

When I used to pray, nightly, begging the Lord not to leave me behind when he came back and forgive me for my horrible sins, it left me feeling worse. Every night. I never felt better or good about begging an invisible god to save me. But, I meditate every day now, and it does everything from calm me down to help me feel gratitude to solve random problems to let me laugh at myself. Meditation also taught me how to identify and describe my feelings when I notice them. I’m truly terrible at it and I don’t actually enjoy doing it. But in this case, thinking about leaving my job and what was holding me back, I knew it was important to at least try. 

So, one day, I did. I figured out that the best way to describe my fear was to see it as a big concrete wall, standing between one part of my life and another. 

I wanted to know what was on the other side of that giant wall of fear. 

That was it. Once that thought clicked for me, I moved from being scared to curious. Let me tell you: that’s a powerfully dangerous shift. I hope some of you have experienced it before. It’s empowering. And fun. 

But, be warned: climbing that wall of fear results in big, big changes. Changes you can’t always predict. Otherwise, you climb back down the fear wall, back to where you were living, before you started asking questions.

And that, to me, is the very definition of hell: holding yourself back from living your life, and fulfilling your purpose, because of fear.

I remember smiling when that shift happened for me: moving from fearful to curious, in relationship to my last job. That’s also all it took to get me to step into my decision with confidence. I visualized myself climbing over the fear wall, standing on top of it, and looking out on to something awesome, and then running after it. At that point, I had to do it. 

Maybe I read too many stories about portals and traveling to other dimensions, but that’s sort of what it felt like, too. I knew I was about to climb through a hole I couldn’t climb back out of. I realized I might miss parts of my situation, like my students, or teaching, or even building a schedule. The boxes and the control! But I would find a way to bring back the parts I liked back into my life. (I am still mentoring and educating others, and I have fallen in love with Sudoku, which fulfills my box-filling, puzzle-solving need.) Also, I love my clients and the work I’m doing for them. It’s been challenging, and fun, and exciting, and I’m thankful to be on the other side of that wall I saw this time last year.

What are you scared of? What is holding you back? These are two of the most powerful questions you could ever ask yourself. They risk bringing you out of your comfort zone, and into something possibly better.